We have started a five-month stay in Bonn, Germany: my sabbatical time. It’s the first new residence we’ve set up in 13 years. Despite our lack of recent experience we instantly adopted a number of conventions that we’ve established over 42 years of marriage, all implicitly designed to minimize transactions costs in our household.
My towel goes on the right of the towel bar, my pills go to the right of my wife’s, I get the right-hand closet, etc. These choices help us avoid confusion and reduce the need to think about things early in the morning when one is barely awake.
There are numerous others, and I’m sure our marriage is typical. Indeed, I would think that the minimization of transactions costs is a major source of economies in marriage/partnership; those marriages/partnerships that are successful are those that are better able to reduce the transactions costs inherent in living together.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Why do you call these “transactions costs”? Because of Coase right?
If you were describe these efficiencies another way, how would you do it? It seems that “transactions costs” is kind of jargon because it’s not descriptive of what’s actually happening.
I believe you are correct Daniel, however I think energy is a better word than cost. Any partnership has a large number of interactions, physical and emotional. All of them take some kind of energy. I think the best marriages manage to expend energy where needed, and avoid wasting it where it simply gets consumed for no real benefit.
As a newlywed, I am learning these things far too often…
if it’s true that (successfully) married couples tend to converge on one another, then wouldn’t there be overlap in the pill consumption?
You could also note that transaction costs might be labeled as bargaining or even as caring. For example, you bargain to ignore a partner’s messiness with his or her clothes in exchange for your own faults. You also care about your partner enough not to bother him or her about their faults and bargain that for not being bothered about yours. You then conflict about areas in dispute, meaning flaws that can’t be ignored or which have changed and thus gone against the established bargain.
My wife and I started out our relationship arguing about the most inane things: who never takes out the garbage; who does more cleaning up, etc. But over the years we’ve evolved/created a routine where we each do the chores we hate least; or the ones we enjoy most. So she cooks and I clean up; I do the yard work and she does the laundry; I load the dishwasher, she unloads; we take turns with the kids needs, etc. It happened naturally, but now is so ingrained we can’t imagine another way. She also always sleeps on the right side of any bed we share; gets the top drawer for her toiletries, and the right side of the closet. There are hundreds of other examples. These unspoken accommodations smooth out life’s everyday machinations and give us a sort of yin and yang fit that strengthens our love. We just celebrated 27 years of marriage and 35 years of being together.
Mitch, Kurt:
As long as you’ve recognized you have exchanged your transaction costs for a capital cost. (25-35 square feet at say $200/sq ft?)
@Joel Me too man. Married on last week. Now I sleep on the left side of the bed and have the left side of the closet. Strange exception, she gets the left sink (our master bathroom has two sinks).